Almost a year back, talking to a television news channel, Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh made a tall claim about the law and order in the state saying that the situation under him "had been the best in the last 15 years."
 
That boast had no legs to stand on even at that time. Adityanath made this claim even as the state police had registered 59,445 cases of crime against women in 2018, the highest in the country. And according to the latest figures that are available with the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), Uttar Pradesh again topped the list in 2019 with 59,853 in such cases. 
 
So, when the incident of alleged rape and violent brutalization of a 19-year-old girl happened on September 14 happened in a small village of western Uttar Pradesh, it would have most likely been just another data point in crimes against women in the state that would find its way into figures for 2020.

But the inhumaneness of the incident has made the whole country take notice of it and condemn it in unison. 

Will it change anything in the state when it comes to crimes against the Dalits or for that matter other lower castes and minorities? Highly unlikely. The present case, despite the outrage, provides enough clues in that regard.
 
Facts about the case
 
The victim and her mother were cutting grass in a large field when the four accused allegedly gang-raped her, chopped her tongue off and smashed her spinal cord leaving her paralyzed.
The accused Sandeep Singh, Lavkush Kumar Singh, Ramu Singh and Ravi Kumar Singh — all upper caste men of Champda village in Hathras district were arrested at intervals as it became a major issue in the state.
The family of the victim has alleged that the local police didn't take the case seriously and that she had to be moved to different hospitals as her condition deteriorated and she was finally moved to Delhi's Safdarjung hospital where she died on September 29.
 
The Safdarjung hospital, in its report, said that she suffered strangulation and had cervical spinal injuries. The Uttar Pradesh Police, later that night, forcefully cremated the body without involving the family members, the victim's relatives allege.
 
The aftermath

The police, it seems, have already started "weakening" the case as the victim's family has alleged in various media interactions. For instance, the police are claiming that since no semen was found on the body of the victim, according to a local hospital's examination, there was unlikely to have been a rape. 

This despite the victim recording a statement on the hospital bed that she was raped. (It is also not clear after how many days of the alleged incident the samples were collected from the victim.)

Various Supreme Court rulings over the years have established that a dying declaration of the victim and other evidence such as injuries on the body are enough to prove rape in a court of law. Why the Uttar Pradesh is bent upon on punching holes in the case even after the victim's own testimony is anybody's guess.
 
In fact, the police itself was slow in registering a case of rape, the family has alleged. It was after more than the week of the assault that a case of gang-rape was added in the face of the case being reported widely in the media.
The state government has now promised a swift probe by a three-member special investigation team under home secretary Bhagwan Swaroop and this will be followed by trying the accused in a 'fast-track' court.
Not many people are holding their breath on the victim getting the justice as promised by the state as it was seen in a purported recording of the district magistrate of Hathras threatening the victim's family regarding the case and how it should conduct itself as the media will not be there forever to take up their case.
In the meanwhile the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has taken the case seriously and summoned senior government officials including the director-general of police to be present before the court on October 12 to explain the case.

 The court took a suo moto cognizance of the incident. The court said that it was upset with police cremating the body without the family's consent. The court has also asked the victim's parents to present their version of the incident.

History of Injustice

Chief Minister Adityanath's assertion that law and order in the state was in a great condition may have not been based on cold statistics, but on the perception, he himself had built around him with the media joining in to puff up that image. 

The fact remains that the state has been topping the list when it comes to atrocities against the lower castes.For instance, according to the NCRB, the state accounted for a fourth of all crimes against Scheduled Castes in India in 2019. The list of atrocities have only been going up in the state and not coming down. The cases of conviction crimes against the Scheduled Castes were also very low with a majority of perpetrators, mostly from upper castes, getting acquitted in the courts of law. More often than not, the acquittals happen because of improper investigations and weak cases being built. Although the police in these cases, more often than not, registers cases under the stringent Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, besides other provisions, the accused still find a way to wriggle out.

Many Dalit activists argue that the police is hand-in-glove with the accused when weak cases are foisted with the intention of losing them.In many semi-urban and rural areas across Uttar Pradesh, and even other parts of the country, young Dalit girls being harassed by upper caste men, or Dalit men being asked to shave off their moustaches as they are meant to be sported only by upper castes or being asked not to ride a horse during weddings or even riding high-end bikes, it’s just another day in the life of the community. 

For instance, in June this year, a teenaged Dalit boy was shot dead in Amroha district, around 200 kilometers northeast of Hathras a few months ago just because it was alleged that he visited a temple despite upper caste community objecting to it.
 
The Caste Cauldron

Uttar Pradesh, despite a powerful Dalit chief minister like Mayawati, ruling the state spread over four terms, the atrocities against Dalits haven't come down.  But Dalits, during Mayawati’s rule at least had the confidence that their cases would be taken up forcefully and the police would be more active. Even that sliver of assurance is gone now.

With a history of misogyny, upper-caste domination, and with the state bureaucracy increasingly becoming politicized, it has meant that it will do what the political masters want it to do rather than siding with the victims.
Ever since Yogi Adityanath, a Thakur by caste became the chief minister, with Brahmins, also siding with him, the upper castes have been feeling emboldened.  And there is enough evidence to suggest that the lower castes and minorities have been at the receiving end even as the state claims that it sees everybody as equal.

The state has a long history of inter-caste tensions with the upper castes relegated to the background because of parties like the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party ruling the state for many years. 
But the caste equations changed after 2014.

Whether it was the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the 2017 elections to the state assembly and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, political analysts say that Dalits had voted en masse along with the upper castes in favour of the BJP, but now the Adityanath government is under the pressure to assuage the hurt feelings on the ground. But the question remains if he can act impartially against the alleged perpetrators who belong to a caste, that many say, sees Adityanath as its own.

Will the political heat generated due to the Hathras incident and the fear of alienation of a community that has stood with the party force the Adityanath government to take a firm stand is the question on top of everybody’s mind. The evidence so far suggests that the state government has decided to brazen it out and wait for the crisis to blow over.

The victim of the family can only hope for closure to their pain with the justice being served in the end. If the state administration fails, they have the High Court to look up to.
 
But will this case, the outrage, and a possible conviction, whenever that happens, if it happens, serve as an example to those who may feel that they can impose themselves on the downtrodden just because of their dominant caste or religious affiliations? Based on the history of such shocking incidents and their trajectory, unfortunately, that is too much to hope for.

 (The writer is a Delhi-based journalist)